The news is better than some would have expected with a few caveats; the numbers don't add up. It is strange that the Economist does not seem to recognize that the household survey is the less reliable of the two surveys, and that TE tries to explain away a gap of almost 800,000 jobs by citing 'definitional differences', yet still accepts the headline unemployment number of 7.8%

So, here's some news for the TE staff and readers: Nobody really believes the job market picture has improved dramatically in the last few months. The U-6 number which captures unemployment and underemployment as well as the marginally attached, stayed the same as in August at 14.7%. This is an important 'tell' and suggests that most of the so-called jobs reported by the household survey were either double counted or marginal part-time jobs or both. The civilian population participation rate is also virtually unchanged at 63.6%, again in contradiction with the numbers.
The number of unemployed supposedly dropped by 456,000 last month while only 114,000 jobs got added. That could only mean that 342,000 people either left the US or the work force. In the household survey, the number of people with jobs supposedly increased by a whopping 873,000. Even taking into consideration that this number is 'seasonally adjusted', it is still very suspicious for manipulated data indeed.

They did note that the household survey is the less reliable one in their note. Maybe it wasn't up yet when you read the article? Also, I know a lot of people that got jobs in the last few months. However, most of them are jobs that they are over qualified for but they needed to do something. This is clearly the definition of anecdotal evidence but the word "nobody" is a bit extreme when clearly some people are getting new jobs.

They did note that, but do they recognize that using those numbers makes the conclusion suspect? If so, why do they swallow the numbers based on the less reliable survey? They have some 'splainin' to do.

The point was made that the household survey matters because neither study is final and the household survey suggests that the payroll survey is most likely erring on the downside. It's all in the post.

Well based on that logic we should probably stop reporting the unemployment rate all together and also stop using the household survey because of it's lesser sample size. I don't agree with you but it is telling that you used the 14.7% and 63.6% figures FROM THE SAME UNRELIABLE SURVEY to defend your skepticism. It is more volatile by nature but 1% of roughly 120 million households is still 1.2 million which is a pretty impressive sample size given the frequency of the survey. There is a reason the private sector and wall street react to this report. If it were bogus people who actually matter would disregard it. It only fuels skepticism amongst those who have trouble digesting it.

You might want to re-read paragraph two. The one that notes that the change was not due to people leaving the labor force.

In fact, as the table on your link shows, labor force participation went up for the month. Not a huge reversal of the trend at this point. But it rather belies your statement that it "continues to trend down."

Well the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) does agree with your statement that it was not due to people leaving the workforce unless you consider the participation rate has dropped from 64.2 to 63.6.

2011 September Civilian non-institutional population
240.0 million people eligible workforce
140.5 million people employed
64.2 participation rate

2012 September Civilian non-institutional population
243.7 million people eligible workforce
143.3 million people employed
63.6 participation rate

SO the US added 3.7 million eligible people while adding 2.8 million jobs between September 2011 and September 2012.

Forget the fact that the US still has 3.3 million less jobs then they had 4 years ago in 2008. The unemployment rate does not matter. Participation rate has gone down so the latest numbers assume more people do not want to work now then before.

2012 Current total US is 133.5 million people with jobs
2008 total US jobs was 136.8 million people employed
2000 total US jobs was 131.8 million people employed
*Non-Farm Employment number

Anyone dumb enough to believe in these numbers? Or do people just not pay attention to the fundamentals anymore?

Fact:
-We have the largest peacetime accumulation of debt in human history
-The massive deleveraging has yet to begin, with it simply being a transfer of debt from private to public for now
-Europe is in a recession, with many parts of southern Europe in a depression.
-EM are forced into tighter monetary policy because of commodity inflation from expansionary policies all across the developed world.
-China is not shifting towards consumption, more importantly, since so much of the growth is driven by investments, they have to build ever more pyramids just to stay in place.
-In such an environment, it is hard to see +1% growth in Europe, +2% in the US and +4% growth in EM.

But, hey, lets just close our eyes and listen to what the telescreen tells us.
- The economy is improving!
- Europe's problem can be fixed magically by money printing
- China can magically fix its economic structure overnight and turn on consumption

So what you are saying is that all such reports fall into one of two categories:
1) those which fit your pre-existing view of things, which are accepted (or even trumpeted)
2) those which conflict with your pre-existing views, which are necessarily falsified.

Well, that's one way to avoid having to deal with objective reality. But I can only hope that you don't do your driving based on what you think ought to be traffic conditions.

Fact:
-You are just plain wrong that deleveraging has yet to begin - take a look at a January 2012 McKinsey Global Institute study comparing progress on deleverging in advanced economies: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/financial_markets/uneven_p...
The study looked at total debt - household, corporate and public and found that:
"Only three countries in the sample—the United States, Australia, and South Korea—have seen the ratio of total debt to GDP decline."
and
"the United States has reached more of these milestones than other nations and is closest to moving into the second, growth phase of deleveraging."
But, hey, lets not listen to hard data, lets listen to your personal, totally unsubstantiated opinions listed out in bullet form with "fact:" typed out so we know it has to be true.

How did almost a million people more people gain jobs in a period of time in which about 400K jobs were added? The report isn't suspicious just because it's timely good news for Obama. It's suspicious because it's a wild deviation from a long trend and it doesn't add up.

LOL only 114,000 new non-farm jobs created this month? Well a president Romney will create at least 500,000 new non-farm jobs every month. Now Mr Romney won't tell us exactly how he will be able to create these jobs, but I think it's safe to trust that his very general rhetoric of laissez faire alone will be able to create all those jobs.

114,000 new jobs? Awesome...we are almost keeping up with the amount of jobs we need to support births! Pretty soon we will start the real recovery when we can catch up on all the ones we lost...I can feel it!

I'm sorry I fail to see how this is really good news when the BLS on their web site shows the labor force participation rate at 63.8% and at this same time last year the rate was 64.1%? That seems like a drop to me.

But by your logic we should place our bets on someone who has for the most part proven he has failed instead of taking a chance on someone that you speculate might fail. Good logic there...

"But by your logic we should place our bets on someone who has for the most part proven he has failed instead of taking a chance on someone that you speculate might fail. Good logic there..."

Somebody should perhaps reread the post above and attempt to better extract the logic from it.

Actually my logic is that that after considering the job-creating abilities/records of both presidential candidates, I deem one to be mediocre and one to likely be very bad. (Falling off a fiscal cliff by eliminating government spending that accounts for 5% of GDP would indeed be very bad for job creation in 2013.) Therefore one should vote for the better (or "least bad" if you prefer) option.

I seem to remember Romney pointing out 5 ideas during the debate. Yes, they were not the most specific. However, how can you get that specific in the debates? What did Obama run on? "Hope and change" WOW! That was specific. What is Obama running with now? "Stay the course"?
That "course" is working out about as good as the replacement referees in the NFL.

Obama may be ruing his poor debate performance even more now.
Had the debate been more of a toss up, I believe this election would now be over.
The Romney campaign has been robbed of its central narrative: that Obama is a failed President because the economy has not improved since Obama took office.
Obama can now respond that he has not only dealt with the worst economic recession since the great depression but created a net 325,000 jobs to boot. He can also point out to all the dissatisfied job-creators and one-percenters that the S&P 500 is up a cool 60% since he took office.

But Romney can still hit Obama on the time it took to get here. Afterall, if this had happened two years ago, we would now have 2 years of solid growth, and be even better off. Not my argument per se, but one that could be made nontheless.

Attacking the message. The unyielding, unceasing, everything-is-always-bad-and-getting-worse message of every post you make.
You really don't realize how you come across. But I don't think you care that much, which is of course your right.
Don't worry, one of these days you'll emerge from your solipsism and become aware of the wide world outside of crumbling Cleveland.